born before the Lambeth marriage, were made illegitimate, and the title of Earl of Berkeley adjudged to the fifth son, Thomas Moreton Fitzhardinge, born October 19, 1796. In 1828 the eldest son, William Fitzhardinge, then Colonel Berkeley, took steps to establish the right of the holder of the castle of Berkeley (left him by his father) to sit as a Baron by tenure. The point, however, was not then determined, Colonel Berkeley being created in 1831 Baron Segrave, and in 1841 Earl Fitzhardinge. His brother Thomas has never assumed the title of Earl of Berkeley, generously deeming that the title would be borne at the expense of a slur upon his mother's fame. He has also made over, for his lifetime, to his illegitimate brothers, the London property, left by Lord Berkeley of Stratton to whoever was Earl of Berkeley, with, of course, an immense amount of ready money as the leases fell in." Earl Fitzhardinge died in October 1857, leaving the castle, &c., to his next brother, Maurice Frederick Fitzhardinge, an admiral in the navy, and who had served many years in Parliament for the city of Gloucester, and was one of the Lords of the Admiralty in the Whig Governments. He revived the claim to the barony, but it was decided against him, and he was subsequently, August 5, 1861, created Baron Fitzhardinge. The family have great influence in Gloucestershire, which they have always exerted in the Whig and Liberal interest. They command one Parliamentary seat for the county of Gloucester, one for the city of Gloucester, and generally one for Cheltenham; and Francis Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley, the youngest of the "illegitimate" brothers, has sat for twenty-seven years for the city of Bristol,

and is well known for his genial and consistent advocacy of the ballot. "If it be true, that around the castle, hill and vale, there are 30,000 acres, as I have heard it asserted," says Mr Grantley Berkeley, "those acres, the fisheries on the Severn, joined to household property forming part of the estate, cannot bring in much less than £60,000 sterling a-year."

The fate of the family is a strange one; but opinion and the Crown combine to override the decision of the House of Lords, and the owners of the castle are considered the legitimate as well as the lineal representatives of the great family whose name they bear.

The Seymours.

HE Seymours, now Dukes of Somerset, are really Tudor nobles, for it was with Henry VIII.'s marriage to Jane Seymour that they became great in the land; but the family had long had a footing on the soil, and may even possibly be descended from one of the Conqueror's followers. It is clear that a landed proprietor named WILLIAM ST MAUR, and of considerable rank and possessions, did in Henry III.'s reign bargain with Gilbert Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, for his aid in taking from the Welshman Morgan, son of Huel, the manor of Undy near Penhow, in Monmouthshire, where stood a church dedicated to St Maur. The manor was obtained, and the St Maurs, who had a castle and park at Penhow, were in 1270 found to possess rights of housebote and heybote as having appertained to Penhow since the Conquest. This William used the pair of wings still part of the coat of arms of the Seymours. Beyond this all is vague; and though the presumption is that the first St Maur came from the place of that name in Normandy, there is no evidence whatever of the fact. Roger, in whose time the assize as to the right of

housebote was held, died before the 28th Edward I., and in 8th Edward II. his son Roger de Seymour appears as Lord of Penhow and Undy, and probably married Joan, the heiress of Danarel of Devonshire.

He had two sons-one, John, whose line died out, and another, ROGER, who married the coheiress of John de Beauchamp, Baron of Hache, who in the 36th Edward III. had assigned for her share on the partition of the inheritance of the Beauchamps the manors of Hache, Shepton-Beauchamp, Murifield, and the third part of Shepton-Malet, in the county of Somerset; also certain lands in Sturminster-Marshel, in Dorset; the manors of Boultbury and Haberton, in Devonshire; the manors of Dourton, in Bucks, and Little Haw, in Suffolk, and two parts of the manor of Selling, in Kent. She survived her husband, and died in 1393. Roger Seymour, on obtaining these lands of his wife's, removed into Somersetshire, and there, and in Devonshire, the family thenceforth became established. He was succeeded by his son, Sir William, who in the 36th Edward III. accompanied that King into Gascony. He sometimes resided at Undy, which had either been left to his father Roger as the younger son's portion, or had come to the younger branch of the Seymours on the extinction of the elder. According to a letter of the Earl of Hertford's, it was not until a much later period, that of his grandfather, that Penhow, the "Seymour castle in Wales," was sold. Collins therefore seems mistaken in giving to Roger, the son of John Seymour of Penhow (elder brother of Roger of Hache), a daughter and heiress, and marrying her to a Bowlays. Sir William Seymour married Margaret, daughter and

heiress of Simon de Brockburn, of Brockburn [Broxbourne], in Hertfordshire, by Joan, sister and heiress of Sir Peter de la Mare. Roger, her son and heir by Sir William Seymour, married the daughter and coheiress of Sir William Esturmi or Sturmy, of Chadham, in Wilts, and lord of Wolfhall in that county, whose ancestors were bailiffs and guardians of the forest of Savernake by right of inheritance from the time of Henry II., and, according to Camden, Seymour, Earl of Hertford in the time of Elizabeth, still kept "their hunter's horn, of a mighty bigness, and tipped with silver." His great-grandson, John, left five sons, the eldest of whom, John, succeeded him in the 7th Henry VII. He distinguished himself at the defeat of Lord Audley and the Cornish insurgents at Blackheath in 1497, and was knighted by the King on the field of battle, and in the 23d of that reign was Sheriff of Wiltshire. He served in Henry VIII.'s wars in France and Flanders, and was made a Knight-Banneret in 1513. In the 7th and 18th Henry VIII. he was Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset, and in the 10th and 16th of Wiltshire. In the 9th Henry VIII., being then one of the Knights of the Body to the King, he obtained a grant of the constableship of Bristol Castle to himself, and Edward his son. In 1518 he was charged to provide ten men for the wars in respect of lands in Wiltshire. In 1520 he attended the King to the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, with a retinue of one chaplain, eleven servants, and eight led horses. He waited on the King at his second interview with Francis at Boulogne in 1532, as one of the Grooms. of the Chamber, and died December 21, 1536, aged